14 #14. The Garlic Man

What a strange year this has been so far, based on what I heard on television on days where I either eat my creamed soup with garlic or not.

Have you ever tried garlic soup? The only cost to this is the possibility of your breath reeking of flesh garlic cloves. My garlic soup in particular has been blemished with some pepper. So imagine creamy soup in a bowl, and on top were the sheds of pepper that wasn't too much but not too little as well. I call it the Blemished Soup with Garlic. Maybe I'll open up a restaurant and make that one of the signature soup dishes. Ah who am I kidding, garlic soup isn't for everyone.

But soup is soup, it's one of the warm foods you can eat on a cold afternoon like today, where it's raining. Of course this is Bogor, the City of Rain, and I've got enough garlic and soup to keep me warm during the cold days of rain. Such rain, keeping everybody inside (well almost everybody) and making everything clean, clearing out the dirt away.

Today I am preparing myself to make a visit to an old friend of mine whom I befriended at Desa Jeruk, it's a small place located just before the roads that lead to Sentul. I've been in Bogor for a while, and it's this friend that's one of the reasons why I am here in this city.

The friend was known as Armin, and unfortunately, he's isolated for a crime that involved him eating. No, he did not barge into a restaurant and did not pay. He took eating took a whole new level. People here call him the Bistro Cannibal, because of what he did in a small bistro in the month of April. The news said he devoured a couple, all the way to what's left of their flesh and bone.

Oh dear as if what he did wasn't enough to shake up 2017.

Armin and I somewhat go way back in school. We were classmates, but I rarely talked to him mainly because he would wander off by the time school was over. An odd person, he was once referred as, but personally I believed he was a harmless one. Of course this was long before his rise as a cannibal, for reasons I have yet to understand.

Not only that, but apparently various reporters on the news were reported to get the scoop on Armin, about who were the people he knew, for the sake of a story to tell to everyone. His parents were out of the question. Mother had passed away, while the father, there's absolutely no clue. Armin was reported to say that his father left the family long ago.

By the time I arrived to at the police station he was detained, it started to rain, and I pulled up my hoodie.

Man at the front desk goes. "Anything I can help you with sir?"

I say. "I'm the Garlic Man."

His eyes widened. "Please go inside, quickly."

We were inside a small meeting room. Inside were a couple of officers, and in front of me was someone who was most likely their superior. It wasn't because of his moustache and age, but rather that glare and stance a higher being would give, and there was also his voice.

"How outrageous that Bistro Cannibal is. It's been alarming the news since he did his thing and it's creating trouble for us. This isn't like handling a speeding ticket or something." The superior started. "As if the Poultry Boy case wasn't troubling enough, we just helped Jakarta Police to apprehend him, but now we still have this cannibal. Sir, we're more than grateful that you've lended us your time to be here, because that man has been asking for you. Pardon, he has been demanding for your presence."

"No problem at all officer." I said. "I decided to come as soon as I heard that it was mentioned in the news."

"Why does he call you that? The Garlic Man?" I took out a grilled garlic clove from my small plastic bag, and asked if I could eat in here. The other officers seemed surprised and some had their eyes rolling.

"The Garlic Man and the Bistro Cannibal." said one young officer. "That sounds like a movie already."

"Or a TV series." said the woman next to him. "Might be produced by Great Axe Productions."

"Jokes aside. We have more pressing matters." their superior said before turning to me. "The Bistro Cannibal-"

"Armin, sir." I cut him off. "Apologies, but he has a name."

"Yes, Armin" He started. "Has refused to cooperate with us on everything ever since he committed that act at the bistro. I know must of you people here don't have strong stomachs, so I'm not gonna recite the whole incident, at least not yet until a trial is finally arranged. I'd like to talk more, but the fact that there other are pressing matters means that we need to pinpoint a temporary stop to this current matter as fast as possible, and this is where you sir, come in."

The officer behind him hands him a phone.

"I need you to store this in your coat. Basically, you're gonna record your conversation with Armin, get everything about his confession and his reasons for doing this. At least have him shed light on this case, it takes a lot to set up a trial, let alone each of the proceedings. Don't talk to him like how we would talk to him. Talk to him like a normal person, indirectly have him open his mouth about this. If you have to spend hours talking with him so be it, the question is, do you have that much time?"

"I do actually."

"You don't like to spend time outside do you sir?"

My only answer to that question was a simple shake of my head.

***

Armin was seated in a jail cell. He was wearing a orange jumpsuit at first, but the only reason he was still here was because a prison hasn't been properly found for him.

The last thing a prison needs is a cannibal inside. Sure the numbers are visible enough, 100 guys against 1 cannibal, but even that would cause trouble.

The recording app on the officer's phone was on, and the said cannibal's seemed more than satisfied to see me.

"It's you." He grinned. "How are you, you garlic eating human?"

"I could ask you the same question." I replied. We talked ever since that friendly greeting. On his end, he talked about his father, his mother, pretty much the aspects of his early life that led him to venture into cannibalism. He sung like a bird, as they say in the movies. He gave me every detail about his crime, and didn't seem to have an inch of regret, considering it was the victims' request to be consumed.

Just goes to show that everybody can equally be extremely wrong in some way. People have a tendency to venture into something new, even if there's a slight effect on their brain, Armin wasn't any different, and neither was his victims.

I took out a garlic clove. "Garlic?"

"No thank you." Armin politely said. "So what you've been doing all this time?"

"I've been helping my sister with a small cafe. Occasionally we also serve some small snacks and even soup. Unlike me, she's not a big fan of garlic."

"Phew I can smell it from here." He replied before he gave out a small laugh. He laughed, so I laughed.

"Hold on a sec." I turned off the recording device on the phone. I got what they needed, but I wasn't gonna end the conversation here.

"Tell me Armin. What's your sentence?" "I'm not sure if I want to think about it. It is

what it is, is it not." He says. "By the end of the day, however, most likely death. I doubt prisons want to keep a cannibal inside with a bunch of prisoners."

"Or Poultry Boy." I say.

"Yeah, him as well. He was talked about ever since I got myself in this place. I kept hearing criminals being detained here wanting protection, cause they wouldn't want to leave this earth with Poultry Boy shoving a cleaver in their face being the last thing they saw with their eyes."

"Tell me Armin, what do you know of anthropology?"

"Anthro-what?"

"Let me put in in basic language: the study of humans."

He wheezed. "That doesn't make any sense.

Why would you study your own species? You're human. I'm human. We're all human."

"Yet here in the world, we have specialized people who take a look at the human brain, how people think, and how they act based on those first two factors. I've seen it Armin. I feel like one of those people whose seen things, thing that can be answered in a simple manner. Sure humanity has begun from the start, but do you think people just do things? No, they think. Their actions is a product of their mindset. Look at you for instance. I'd bet you that everybody out there, the journalists, the media, or any people whose curiosity levels is up the roof, they want to know what's in your head, what the hell were you thinking that made you eat people."

"They're that curious?

"I've seen people do things. My neighbor for example. A young artist who's already made a living. Cynthia Putri Auzaria. She went mad. Apparently she's suffered a burnout from working on her paintings, and pretty much, has a nasty cause of insomnia. Went wild went somebody allegedly

insulted her and her work. There was also Ibu Pari, my new neighbor who took Auzaria's place. She told me things that happened in her village, things that made her leave and move out. Trust me, I was surprised at what she told me. One incident happened there was that she and her fellow villagers accidently stumbled a deranged man and a goat having some 'action'."

"What kind of-" Armin stopped before it clicked to him. He chuckled hard. "I get it now."

"Even a neighborhood can't escape the madness of a person. Ever heard of that man who dug up his wife's corpse and recreated his wedding? Yeah, there are some rumors he also recreated the first night a married couple would have after marriage. Keep in mind, this was a corpse. His own wife's corpse."

Armin's eyes widened, but it was accompanied by a smile and he was on the verge of laughing.

"People are into those stories?"

"It's how it is, people naturally would be drawn into something that's out of place. Whether they want to spend time more on it is up to them, but once they're hooked on it, they're hooked. It's just a matter of time till somebody becomes interested or obsessed with you and your crime"

"I didn't think people would want to put their nose where they shouldn't be."

"It's always been like that. It's not really wrong, people have different interests but when was the last time you've heard somebody say 'hey, I'm okay with my friend who's interested in learning about a psychopath?'

"Heh" said Armin. "People sound complicated."

"I study anthropology not just for my own gain, but perhaps that knowledge can enable me to help people. I would help you if given the chance, but sadly the law has made it clear for you, ironically putting you to death because you caused two deaths."

"Isn't that how the death sentence works?" "I once conducted a social experiment. I had people visit a prison, and there I had them confront several criminals who were monitored by guards. I asked the volunteers would they kill the criminals by the time they understood the crimes the prisoners committed. Would you like to guess the result? None of them said they were willing to kill a criminal, even if it was the worst kind."

"Wow." Armin said

"Most of the volunteers said that nobody in the history of mankind was ever born evil and this theory applies to the prisoners. Sadly, the law becomes the best front to kill off another extremely flawed human being. Tear away all the covers and excuses, and you got yourself the same bad act that people must never do."

We ended our conversation there. That would be the last time I ever saw him.

In the beginning, I've never really had an open view on the world and its inhabitants, until my parents introduce me to the world of investigating and understanding the human mind, the very machine that produces people's actions.

The things I've seen, the words I've heard, it's an eye opener really when you tear away the fakeness of what people are.

They think they're better than most people in anything, but that doesn't make you perfect. It just makes you slightly better than most people. Nothing more, nothing less. My father once told me that we are just inhabitants of this planet, we are not special beyond what we are. We are not aliens, fantasy creatures or anything that extraterrestrial.

We're just human, that's it.

Armin wasn't a good person, but I doubt everybody who thinks they're better than him are truly better. Of course my job isn't really to judge others, it's to understand the human condition they have as with myself.

I leave the phone at superior officer's office, and I pass the front desk man. It was still raining outside. I bit another fried garlic clove, and I took a few steps forward, letting the raindrops hit my face and run down it. I raise my arms and I smiled.

If you ever ask me if I'm a good person than I would let my actions say it for themselves, because I am working with good people.

Let me play that role in preserving the human race, first in this country

And then the world itself.